Shakedownsports.com

Watch out John McCain. You’re not the only politician who likes to break up monotony of government spending debates by talking about sports. Utah governor Jon Huntsman Jr. loves the Dew Action Sports Tour.

Never has a politician had as much of a connection with the action sports athletes as Huntsman, especially when it comes to freestyle motocross.

“I’ve heard of a lot of governors and anyone in the legislature being against motocross,” rider Mike Mason said. “But I’ve never heard of someone being into it. I would support that guy ’til the end. Anything he wanted from us, I’d do, because it’s awesome. It’s not like he just appreciates what we do. He’s like a full-on, die-hard fan of moto.”

At this weekend’s event in Salt Lake City Huntsman helped decide who won the award for best trick and he joined the NBC broadcast team in the booth. Who knew the Dew Tour even had any die-hard fans over the age of 25, let alone one who’s a governor.

Further demonstrating his “coolness”, Huntsman had one suggestion for the event.

“The only thing missing, basically, is Foo Fighters,” Huntsman said. “If we get Foo Fighters here to perform as background, we’d have it all.”

All the guy wants is some motorcross and some Foo Fighters for the loyal Utah residents who elected him. It’s the only proven way to keep kids away from the dangers of monogamy.

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–Vernon Davis is open on every play and he wants the ball. (Sacramento Bee)

–How accurate is yahoo!’s fantasy football projection algorithm. (Ghosts of Wayne Fontes)

–The Cubs don’t want people know Mark Cuban is aware of their existence. (Sports By Brooks)

–Sorry Raiders fans, no TV for you. This may even be a good thing. (Mercury News)

–Big Boi is the newest member of the Georgia Tech band. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

–ESPN is airing a town hall meeting about Michael Vick. I don’t even know what to say. (Awful Announcing)

–Good news. Jose Canseco is doing stuff again. (Epic Carnival)

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Here it is folks, my latest picks column from SI.com.

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It looks like Roger Goodell isn’t the only sports disciplinarian with a disdain for strip clubs. This week English cricket player Paul Collingwood was fined 1,000 pounds for visiting “a lap dancing bar” during a cricket tournament.

The real bad news for Collingwood is that he can’t even say the nighttime entertainment helped him get ready for the next match. The following day against South Africahe recored a “first-ball duck”, something akin to repeatedly striking out with the bases loaded.

Fortunately, Collingwood is extremely well versed in the athlete tradition of accepting blame while denying responsibility.

“The fact is I made a mistake, that’s what it comes down to, and what I need to focus on now is a big game tomorrow [England play India] for us.

“I was taken in a car with friends and taken to the bar and got there, had a beer and thought ‘I need to get out of this place’.”

For now Collingwood’s behavior will be a warning to all those young whippersnapper cricket players who think it’s alright if they go to strip clubs during tournaments. The lesson, as always, is if you want to be a famous athlete in England and a sexual deviant, it’s best to be a soccer player.

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(Every week there are a number of stories slip through the cracks here at ShakedownSports. These are just a few of them.)

A panel of arbitrators upheld Floyd Landis’ positive test results. The decision means that Landis will be stripped of his Tour de France title and he could face an additional two year ban from cycling. I guess Landis and his defense team didn’t make enough threatening phone calls.

Barry Bonds finally revealed what he thinks about the man who bought his 756th home run ball–Bonds called him and idiot and says the man wasted his money. Of course Bonds believes you should only spend money on things that allow you to make more money. Things such as the “cream” and the “clear.”

The Charlotte Bobcats finally acquired the domain name Bobcats.com, purchasing it this week from a bobcat breeder for $50,000. The purchase should spell the end of the team’s old official website, AdamMorrisonSucks.com.

The Cavs moved into a new $25 million practice facility this week, and as a joke somebody had the office of general manager and Duke alum Danny Ferry painted Tar Heel blue. What’s even worse is that the painters were paid with Visa and not American Express.

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Sorry North Carolina high school athletes—the party is over. You’re no longer going to be able to express your feelings about what’s happening on the field.

Charlie Adams, executive director of the N.C. High School Athletic Association, said he plans to push a zero tolerance policy for profanity to the NCHSAA Board of Directors to vote on at their winter meetings. If it passes, Adams said he expects to levy fines next fall against schools whose athletes violate the language policy.

Many states already have rules against profanity that call for fines ranging from $100 to $250. Adams says that for now no players will be punished with suspensions.

Call me old fashioned, but when a player misses a big shot or gives up a home run he should be allowed to yell “fuck” in frustration. This rule can’t help but make me think of Amare Stoudemire getting suspended for taking two steps toward Robert Horry after Horry body checked Steve Nash. You just can’t strictly enforce a rule that is counter to the brain’s natural reaction.  You know what happens when players have to bottle up their frustration?  They end up charging into the stands and punching fans.

The good news (or bad news, depending on your view) is that because there are no suspensions and the schools have to pay the fines, there’s really still no incentive for players not to use profanity.   My suggestion is for players to protest the rule by have a contest to see who can rack up the most fines.

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This stuff is so good,O.J. wishes he could steal it…

–Not being the subject of trade rumors must be boring for Andrei Kirilenko. This week the Jazz forward announced he wants out of Utah. (Salt Lake Tribune)

–A really good idea for fixing college football. Too bad it will never happen. (Epic Carnival)

–The NHL may finally scrap it’s flawed imbalanced schedule. (Denver Post)

–Just in case you were wondering what happened to the legendary Stoney Case. (Baltimore Sun)

–Michael Strahan came back to the NFL for this? (Fanhouse)

–Sidney Crosby has some expensive hockey cards. (Mondesi’s House)

–Kentucky fans have no regard for the rules—or the health of their broadcaster’s family. (Louisville Courier-Journal)

–The people in charge of the University of Colorado are big hypocrites. (Our Book of Scrap)

–Stephen A. Smith is AWOL. (Philadelphia Inquirer)

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Irish midfielder Stephen Ireland is the Larry David of European soccer. Last week he asked to be excused from Ireland’s match against the Czech Republic because his grandmother died. The thing is, she wasn’t actually dead. Ireland then decided the best solution was more lies.

When journalists discovered earlier this week that Ireland’s maternal grandmother, Patricia Tallon, was alive and well - and shocked to read about her death in the newspapers - Ireland changed his story to say his paternal grandmother, Brenda Kitchener, had died. She, in turn, read about her own death and at least one newspaper was reportedly threatened with legal action by relatives on Thursday. Ireland is then understood to have changed his story again, this time claiming that one of his grandfathers was divorced and that it was his elderly partner who had died. That was also exposed as a lie.

Only then did Ireland come clean and say that the real reason he left the team was because his girlfriend had a miscarriage and he wanted to be with her. Nobody knows why Ireland didn’t just tell the truth in the first place—a miscarriage is certainly a good enough reason to take a leave of absence from the team. Perhaps his kindergarten teacher just forgot to teach him that honesty is the best policy.

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San Jose State coach Dick Tomey was unhappy with how his team played in Saturday’s 37-0 loss to Stanford. Extremely unhappy. After the game he went on a tirade that let everybody know about it.

“We were awful, we were badly coached,” Tomey said. “We were a bunch of prima donnas. We just don’t compete.”

Wow. You’d have to be a pretty big prima donna to end up at San Jose State and still be a prima donna. One would think being passed over by every single PAC-10 school would put a dent in somebody’s arrogance.

Tomey wasn’t done yet.

Tomey, whose team fell to 0-3 for the first time since 2001, said he will begin the repair job at 6:30 a.m. today in full gear. “Anybody who is not there is cut and any coach who is not there is fired,” Tomey said. “We’ve got a short time to put this thing together.”

That’s harsh. Even Tom Coughlin thinks cutting somebody for being late is going a little overboard. Hopefully somebody will show up at 6:32 and we’ll get to see whether Tomey is a man of his word.

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Just in case you didn’t think this season’s Super Bowl is a big deal in Arizona, you should know that even the schools aren’t immune from all the hype-building that’s going on. This year numerous Arizona teachers have taken part in the Super Learning in a Super State program, an “academic youth program for grades kindergarten through 12, that uses the Super Bowl as an outreach platform to focus on literacy, character education, environmental awareness and community service.”

At first that all sounds nice and dandy—it seems like it will be fun for both teachers and children to use football to learn—but then I read this horrific item:

Patricia Pearson, a “huge football fan” and seventh- and eighth-grade teacher at St. Daniel the Prophet Elementary School, heard about the program through her work with Spike’s Super Crew, the host committee’s volunteer program in Arizona.

Pearson’s classes play Fantasy Football Math, in which students choose a team of players and use math skills to figure individual and team statistics.

In effect, these children are being forced to play fantasy football. Now they’ll never even have the chance to live productive fulfilling lives that are free from fantasy football’s choking grip. They’re only twelve years old and already they have no hope. This teacher might as well have given her kids alcohol and cigarettes. The next 70 years of their lives are now going to revolve around mindless statistics and injury reports. They’re just kids. They’re too young for this. Their whole futures had been in front of them. They should have been able to chose whether or not get involved in something as consuming as fantasy football. How could something this destructive have made it into our schools?

On another note, my extensive investigation into this whole program has turned up something interesting. The program is sponsored by Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc., one of the worlds largest producers of gold and copper. Last month one of the chairs of the Super Learning in Super State program (who is also community affairs director for Freeport-McMoRan) did a quick Q&A. Here is her answer to a question about her favorite Super Learning lesson plan:

Of course, I’m partial to the lesson called “The Rx of Cu,” which is targeted at students in Grades 9-12 in science, biology or economics and allows them to explore some of the uses of copper. Not only is copper essential for nearly everything we use on a daily basis, from electricity to cars to computers, but it has some unique anti-microbial properties that students will discover.

Ok, let me see if I get this straight. A copper company is sponsoring an education program that uses the Super Bowl to teach students about math, science, reading etc., and one of the lesson plans is about how copper is extremely wonderful.

Hmmmm. I’m not really sure what that has to do with the Super Bowl, nor am I sure why 17-year-olds need additional education about the beauty of copper. If I didn’t know any better I’d say that Freeport-McMoRan is using an educational program to secretly promote the interests of their company. Shocking isn’t it? The company got access to high school curriculums and now they’re using that access to pump kids full of information about how good their product is.

All these kids wanted was to learn about the Super Bowl instead of Math. Now they’re stuck learning about the 101 uses of copper.

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